Minor Hockey Fundraising Ideas

[calgarygeologist]

I know some of you guys have been through many years of minor hockey with your kids and you've probably seen all sorts of fundraising ideas over the years. What are some of the best fundraising opportunities?

This is only my third year in minor hockey so I haven't seen much. The first year I don't think we raised too much money and we did a couple of booze basket draws. Each family donated two bottles and we put together two baskets. It was pretty decent and relatively easy but the biggest hassle with that is the requirement to get the draw registered with AGLC and the record keeping of each ticket sold for audit purposes. Last year we sold Coop and Safeway gift cards and I thought it was a great fundraiser. It was really easy to set up and required pretty minimal effort. We raised $1050 which was a little lower than I expected because a couple families didn't really participate. I would do a gift card fundraiser again.

What are some other good fundraisers?

-Various raffles
-bottle drive (I hate the idea of this because it seems like a lot of work for little reward)
-various direct sales (chocolates, Spulumbos, etc. I don't really like these because it never seems to generate a lot of money and I hate trying to get friends and family to buy stuff)
-direct sponsorship (does anyone have a business that wants to donate some money to us?)
-Casino/bingo/50-50 draws

[Aeneas]

Two years ago we all just paid money. No one really wanted to fund raise.

Last year we did a bottle collection. No organised drive, just every family made an effort to collect from family friends and neighbours. We actually did extremely well. All we had to do was bring all our bags and boxes to the rink a day when we had practice. Had a truck there.

I think had we picked one day and tried to get everyone together to go on a drive we would not have done so well.

[TimSJ]

depending on the Age there is the Dodge Caravan kids program. you have to put a dodge logo on thier jerseys and take a picture and send it to them or something and they will give you $500 for your team

http://www.dodgecaravankids.ca/en/sponsorship/

[Northendzone]

to me the good thing about eh bottle drive is that the kids on the team have to do work.

with most other stuff, it is the parents doing a lot of the stuff.

but otherwise I have no real good ideas

[calgarygeologist]

Originally Posted by TimSJ

depending on the Age there is the Dodge Caravan kids program. you have to put a dodge logo on thier jerseys and take a picture and send it to them or something and they will give you $500 for your team

http://www.dodgecaravankids.ca/en/sponsorship/

This is a good one. Thanks for that. I'll pass that along to our team parents.

[Northendzone]

Originally Posted by TimSJ

depending on the Age there is the Dodge Caravan kids program. you have to put a dodge logo on thier jerseys and take a picture and send it to them or something and they will give you $500 for your team

http://www.dodgecaravankids.ca/en/sponsorship/

your association may not like this and it really differentiates one team over another in the association.

[calgarygeologist]

Originally Posted by Northendzone

your association may not like this and it really differentiates one team over another in the association.

It could be an issue. I fired off an email to the association to see if they have any objections to jersey sponsorship.

[troutman]

Originally Posted by calgarygeologist

I know some of you guys have been through many years of minor hockey with your kids and you've probably seen all sorts of fundraising ideas over the years. What are some of the best fundraising opportunities?

This is only my third year in minor hockey so I haven't seen much. The first year I don't think we raised too much money and we did a couple of booze basket draws. Each family donated two bottles and we put together two baskets. It was pretty decent and relatively easy but the biggest hassle with that is the requirement to get the draw registered with AGLC and the record keeping of each ticket sold for audit purposes. Last year we sold Coop and Safeway gift cards and I thought it was a great fundraiser. It was really easy to set up and required pretty minimal effort. We raised $1050 which was a little lower than I expected because a couple families didn't really participate. I would do a gift card fundraiser again.

What are some other good fundraisers?

-Various raffles
-bottle drive (I hate the idea of this because it seems like a lot of work for little reward)
-various direct sales (chocolates, Spulumbos, etc. I don't really like these because it never seems to generate a lot of money and I hate trying to get friends and family to buy stuff)
-direct sponsorship (does anyone have a business that wants to donate some money to us?)
-Casino/bingo/50-50 draws

http://www.aglc.ca/licensingeligibility/default.asp

If your group is eligible for a casino, that is big money - around $80K. You have to wait about 18 months between casinos. There is a lot of paperwork.

[calgarygeologist]

Originally Posted by troutman

http://www.aglc.ca/licensingeligibility/default.asp

If your group is eligible for a casino, that is big money - around $80K. You have to wait about 18 months between casinos. There is a lot of paperwork.

The casino idea definitely seems like something that would be association level instead of team level. I know my kid's school does a casino every few years to fill their coffers (their last casino was the previous school year.)

[socktape]

I think we might do a paint night and/or ladies night with our team. There are a couple groups that do it in the city. I think you need at least 35 people. So you cover the cost and then add some dough to the ticket price to raise some funds.

[wookster]

I would caution against a bottle drive...a collection like mentioned above would definitely be better.

We have had at least a dozen groups come around our house this summer doing bottle drives...even two on the same weekend...I would imagine that 2nd group was really hit hard for donations.

Bottle drives are way too saturated, at least in my area (I live in Evergreen) and I can't see the reward being worth the time.

[calgarygeologist]

Originally Posted by wookster

I would caution against a bottle drive...a collection like mentioned above would definitely be better.

We have had at least a dozen groups come around our house this summer doing bottle drives...even two on the same weekend...I would imagine that 2nd group was really hit hard for donations.

Bottle drives are way too saturated, at least in my area (I live in Evergreen) and I can't see the reward being worth the time.

That is partially my concern as well but also it seems like a lot of effort is required. We had the local boy scout group come around last week but in general we don't get a lot of bottle drives in my neighbourhood (I think two or three requests so far this year.)

[Northendzone]

^ bottle drives can be hit or miss depending on some of the above mentioned factors. teams I have been involved with have historically done ok and generated a couple of thousand

[Mccree]

We had one parent (Girl guide leader so she is used to this crap) have the team just bring bottles to practices over the course of the year and she handled all the work. Raised about $1,000 but my team was full of Alcoholics.

Raffles are always better than selling stuff. Our Association also organizes a silent auction which is a lot of fun and raises a good amount of money for the teams.

[Leeman4Gilmour]

For my son, we've almost always forked over around $150 at the start of the year to get things started and made all the funds we needed by hosting the Christmas Cruncher (Bonavista tourney). Usually get about half the start up money back at the end of the year. So, if you can host a tournament, it can work out pretty well (raffles, silent auction, etc., 50/50, money stick, etc.)

[Lubicon]

Spolumbos, hands down the best bang for your buck for fundraising. Easy to do and you can make a decent amount from it.

And if you happen to have a WestJet parent on the team you can usually do a raffle for flights. This has been a good one for us in the past too.

The downside is neither one involves the kids, the parents end up doing msot of the work. Bottle drives - love em or hate em - at least the kids put in the majority of the effort which is important in my mind.

[Bill Bumface]

How about charging fees that cover the cost of your kids participating in their activities instead of asking strangers to subsidize them?

I'm all for Kid Sport and the like enabling lower income kids to participate, but I have zero interest in loading someone's Range Rover with $60 in bottles for their kid.

[Angelamc]

By far the most lucrative fundraiser we've done in the past was organizing a poker night. A bit of work but worth it (I think it was just over 10k for the team). Held it a community hall room, sold tickets for 20 bucks, cash bar, parents volunteered as dealers, servers etc., licenses were cheap and easy to get and mucho profit made from the gambling.
We've also hosted parents night, silent auction etc. at Schanks, they allow you to run around and sell your tickets, raffle or 50/50 or whatever to the other patrons in the bar, we had a busy night, made really good money.
I think a cash calendar was the only other one that made good enough money to be worth the time. I hardly recall but it involved selling tickets cheap to win cash, not a hard sell.
I guess it depends on what your parent group is like also, if they are cool and even like hanging out together, it helps. Good luck

[calgarygeologist]

Originally Posted by Bill Bumface

How about charging fees that cover the cost of your kids participating in their activities instead of asking strangers to subsidize them?

I'm all for Kid Sport and the like enabling lower income kids to participate, but I have zero interest in loading someone's Range Rover with $60 in bottles for their kid.

It certainly is much easier that way. We'll probably be doing $200 cash call for each kid plus hoping for about $1500 in fundraising. That $1500 would be about $100 per kid for a total of ~$300 per kid. It isn't really a huge amount but for some families it really adds up (2 or 3 kids at $300 cash call plus $700 or more for regular fees.)

I like fundraisers that actually make sense like the grocery store gift cards. People need to buy groceries any ways so why not front load your grocery expenses for few months and buy $500 or $1000 worth of gift cards for which the team gets about 10% returned to them. If we do the gift cards again this year we'll probably buy $2000 worth which nets the team $210.

[Leeman4Gilmour]

Originally Posted by Bill Bumface

How about charging fees that cover the cost of your kids participating in their activities instead of asking strangers to subsidize them?

I'm all for Kid Sport and the like enabling lower income kids to participate, but I have zero interest in loading someone's Range Rover with $60 in bottles for their kid.

In contrast, I look forward to when some group comes along to collect my empties. I don't like doing it to raise money for my kids, because collecting bottles is quite terrible (been there done that). However, if a group says to their kids, "listen, if you want to go on a road trip for a tourney in Golden, I expect you to put in a days work collecting bottles to help pay for that", I think that's a great message to send youth.